By Paul Jay, CBCNews.ca. With May right around the corner, students are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, one that points to the end of the school year in June. But for a certain subset of students, the time to think about exams and final projects - still weeks away - is less important than the task at hand: building a better robot.

By Emily Chung, CBCNews.ca

Yesterday, I received a note in my inbox saying that the internet security firm Websense had "already detected tens of thousands of spam messages with #SwineFlu themed subjects via Twitter, mostly offering cheap pharma drugs."

By Emily Chung, CBCNews.ca

Legitimate businesses could probably learn something from spammers, who often identify new trends and move to exploit them far more quickly than the suit set does.

By Jesse Brown, CBC technology columnist:

Hossein Derakshan is a Canadian citizen who has been rotting in a Tehran jail since November. To the best of our knowledge, he has yet to be charged with anything (though it’s safe to assume that his detainment has something to do with the fact that he’s a highly opinionated and influential blogger). His case has gotten far too little attention from our government and from our media. But last week, someone finally took notice: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

By Emily Chung, CBCNews.ca

When will we begin automatically thinking of e-books when someone says the word "book"? Perhaps when they start becoming as popular as real books – low-tech wonders that you can easily borrow, lend, move from shelf to shelf, give away, or sell to a used bookstore – unlike many of their digital counterparts.

By Paul Jay, CBCNews.ca. The federal conservative government has had a few public disagreements with the scientific community in the last year, over things like funding, the closure of the Office of the National Science Advisor, the environment, decisions viewed as overtly political and yes, funding again.

By Jesse Brown, CBC technology columnist:

The latest YouTube remix sensation has nothing to do with Christian Bale, little boys high on laughing gas or sensitive country musicians. It has to do with an anti-same-sex marriage ad produced by a group called the National Organization for Marriage.

By Emily Chung, CBCNews.ca

In a recent study, U.S. college students who use Facebook had significantly lower grades than people who didn't use the social networking site.

By Jesse Brown, CBC technology columnist:

Tweetin’ Toronto Mayor David Miller spoke and took questions at the Mesh Tech Conference in Toronto today. I was tapped to interview him and lead the Q & A. Mayor Miller used the opportunity to announce a new transparency-in-government website, toronto.ca/open. It’s set to launch this fall.

By Paul Jay, CBCNews.ca

One of the recurring themes of social media talks is: "How can I make money off it?" Or, to put it another way: "Can anyone make money off it?"

by Paul Jay, CBCNews.ca

Earlier today Jessica Jackley, one of the founders of micro-lending site Kiva, gave a well-received speech and q and a at the mesh conference in Toronto, and in summing up her acheivements, she said:

"I am not wealthy but I think I could retire on happiness."

By Paul Jay, CBCNews.ca.

I just sat down for half an hour with Mike Masnick to talk about social media business models and everything from Second Life to Twitter, which I'll be writing in tommorow's CBCnews.ca technology section as a Q&A. But I wanted to mention his reaction to the Wolverine controversy from yesterday's blog post - would Fox's reaction lead to their doom or is there really no such thing as bad publicity?

By Paul Jay, CBCNews.ca.

Techdirt's Mike Masnick just finished his presentation at the Mesh conference in Toronto on building a business model in a world of infinite goods ... goods like information and music.

By Paul Jay, CBCNews.ca. One of the potential downsides of giant media conglomerates with their hands in every consumer cookie jar is that the left-hand doesn't always know what the right-hand is doing, and that there are way more than two hands at work here.

by Paul Jay, CBCNews.ca. I think there should probably be a limit on the number of times we can post about one subject on the Tech blog, but it's worth mentioning that Skype is reporting that its iPhone application has been downloaded more than one million times in the first two days after it became available, which, as TechCrunch notes, works out to around six downloads every second.

by Paul Jay, CBCNews.ca. As a final follow-up to our Skype story from a couple of days ago, we've learned in the last couple of days a great deal about what isn't keeping the popular voice-over-internet application from coming to the iPhone in Canada.

By Jesse Brown, CBC technology columnist:

This summer, the CRTC will finally rule on whether traffic shaping by ISPs is legal. To do so, they’ll hold hearings, and in those hearings, opinions will be heard. Yours can be among them. Yesterday the CRTC opened an online public consultation on net neutrality.